Maya Jasanoff: Book Prize Celebration

One of the nation’s largest literary awards, the annual George Washington Book Prize, was awarded to Maya Jasanoff for Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World at Mount Vernon in May 2012. Complete with the Maryland Loyalist Battalion and WAC students recruiting for and against the loyalists, Jasanoff was welcomed to Washington College to discuss her book. The next morning Maya Jasanoff and Adam Good heart had an open discussion about how books are born.

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One of the nation’s largest literary awards, the annual George Washington Book Prize was presented to Maya Jasanoff for Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World.

The Washington Prize, honoring the year’s best book about America’s founding era, is sponsored by a partnership of three institutions devoted to furthering historical scholarship: Washington College, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and George Washington’s Mount Vernon. It particularly recognizes well-written books that speak to general audiences and contribute to a broad public understanding of the American past.

History, as we know, is most often told by the victors. In Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (Knopf, 2011), Harvard University history professor Maya Jasanoff, winner of the 2012 George Washington Book Prize, reverses the trend, tracing the stories of Americans loyal to the English crown and their forced exodus at the end of the American Revolution. “Losers seldom get to write thehistory, but the American loyalists have at last got their historian with Maya Jasanoff,” says historian Joseph J. Ellis, while Sean Wilentz says that her “stunning reinterpretation … affirms her place as one of the very finest historians of the rising generation.” Jasanoff is also author of the critically acclaimed Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750-1850.

Pauline Maier accepted the 2011 George Washington Book Prize for Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788 on Wednesday, May 25 at an elegant black-tie gala at Mount Vernon. The winner of one of the largest literary prizes in the country was presented with a medal and $50,000 check from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, which co-sponsors the prize with Washington College and George Washington’s Mount Vernon. The celebration honoring this year’s three finalists was attended by about 175 people, including faculty, board members, students and dignitaries from the worlds of publishing, academia, law and politics.